Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

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Title: Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

Author: Herman Melville

Release Date: May 19, 2004 [EBook #12384]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASPECTS OF WAR ***

Produced by David Maddock

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.

By Herman Melville.

NEW YORK:

Harper & Brothers, Publishers,

Franklin Square

1866.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, by

Harper & Brothers,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

The Battle-Pieces

in this volume are dedicated

to the memory of the

THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND

who in the war

for the maintenance of the Union

fell devotedly

under the flag of their fathers.

[With few exceptions, the Pieces in this volume originated in an impulse imparted by the fall of Richmond. They were composed without reference to collective arrangement, but being brought together in review, naturally fall into the order assumed.

The events and incidents of the conflict—making up a whole, in varied amplitude, corresponding with the geographical area covered by the war—from these but a few themes have been taken, such as for any cause chanced to imprint themselves upon the mind.

The aspects which the strife as a memory assumes are as manifold as are the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance. Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings not inspired from any one source exclusively, and unmindful, without purposing to be, of consistency, I seem, in most of these verses, to have but placed a harp in a window, and noted the contrasted airs which wayward wilds have played upon the strings.]

The Portent.

(1859.)

Hanging from the beam,

  Slowly swaying (such the law),

Gaunt the shadow on your green,

  Shenandoah!

The cut is on the crown

(Lo, John Brown),

And the stabs shall heal no more.

Hidden in the cap

  Is the anguish none can draw;

So your future veils its face,

  Shenandoah!

But the streaming beard is shown

(Weird John Brown),

The meteor of the the war.

Contents.

Misgivings

The Conflict of Convictions

Apathy and Enthusiasm

The March into Virginia

Lyon

Ball's Bluff

Dupont's Round Fight

The Stone Fleet

Donelson

The Cumberland

In the Turret

The Temeraire

A Utilitarian View of the Monitors Fight

Shiloh

The Battle for the Mississipppi

Malvern Hill

The Victor of Antietam

Battle of Stone River

Running the Batteries

Stonewall Jackson

Stonewall Jackson (ascribed to a Virginian)

Gettysburg

The House-top

Look-out Mountain

Chattanooga

The Armies of the Wilderness

On the Photograph of a Corps Commander

The Swamp Angel

The Battle for the Bay

Sheridan at Cedar Creek

In the Prison Pen

The College Colonel

The Eagle of the Blue

A Dirge for McPherson

At the Cannon's Mouth

The March to the Sea

The Frenzy in the Wake

The Fall of Richmond

The Surrender at Appomattox

A Canticle

The Martyr

The Coming Storm

Rebel Color-bearers at Shiloh

The Muster

Aurora-Borealis

The Released Rebel Prisoner

A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia

Formerly a Slave.

The Apparition

Magnanimity Baffled

On the Slain Collegians

America

Verses Inscriptive and Memorial

On the Home Guards who perished in the Defense of Lexington, Missouri

Inscription for Graves at Pea Ridge, Arkansas

The Fortitude of the North Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas

On the Men of Maine killed in the Victory of Baton Rouge, Louisiana

An Epitaph

Inscription for Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg

The Mound by the Lake

On the Slain at Chickamauga

An uninscribed Monument on one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness

On Sherman's Men Who fell in the Assault of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia

On the Grave of a young Cavalry Officer killed in the Valley of Virginia

A Requiem for Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports

On a natural Monument in a field of Georgia

Commemorative of a Naval Victory

Presentation to the Authorities, by Privates, of Colors captured in Battles ending in the Surrender of Lee

The Returned Volunteer to his Rifle

The Scout toward Aldie

Lee in the Capitol

A Meditation

Supplement

Misgivings.

(1860.)

  When ocean-clouds over inland hills

    Sweep storming in late autumn brown,

  And horror the sodden valley fills,

    And the spire falls crashing in the town,

  I muse upon my country's ills—

  The tempest bursting from the waste of Time

On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.

  Nature's dark side is heeded now—

    (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)—

  A child may read the moody brow

    Of yon black mountain lone.

  With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,

  And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:

The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

The Conflict of Convictions.

[1]

(1860-1.)

[1] The gloomy lull of the early part of the winter of 1860-1, seeming big with final disaster to our institutions, affected some minds that believed them to constitute one of the great hopes of mankind, much as the eclipse which came over the promise of the first French Revolution affected kindred natures, throwing them for the time into doubt and misgivings universal.

On starry heights

  A bugle wails the long recall;

Derision stirs the deep abyss,

  Heaven's ominous silence over all.

Return, return, O eager Hope,

  And face man's latter fall.

Events, they make the dreamers quail;

Satan's old age is strong and hale,

A disciplined captain, gray in skill,

And Raphael a white enthusiast still;

Dashed aims, at which Christ's martyrs pale,

Shall Mammon's slaves fulfill?

    (Dismantle the fort,

    Cut down the fleet—

    Battle no more shall be!

    While the fields for fight in æons to come

    Congeal beneath the sea.)

The terrors of truth and dart of death

  To faith alike are vain;

Though comets, gone a thousand years,

    Return again,

Patient she stands—she can no more—

And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.

    (At a stony gate,

    A statue of stone,

    Weed overgrown—

    Long 'twill wait!)

But God his former mind retains,

  Confirms his old decree;

The generations are inured to pains,

  And strong Necessity

Surges, and heaps Time's strand with wrecks.

  The People spread like a weedy grass,

  The thing they will they bring to pass,

And prosper to the apoplex.

The rout it herds around the heart,

  The ghost is yielded in the gloom;

Kings wag their heads—Now save thyself

  Who wouldst rebuild the world in bloom.

    (Tide-mark

    And top of the ages' strike,

    Verge where they called the world to come,

    The last advance of life—

    Ha ha, the rust on the Iron Dome!)

Nay, but revere the hid event;

  In the cloud a sword is girded on,

I mark a twinkling in the tent

  Of Michael the warrior one.

Senior wisdom suits not now,

The light is on the youthful brow.

    (Ay, in caves the miner see:

    His forehead bears a blinking light;

    Darkness so he feebly braves—

    A meagre wight!)

But He who rules is old—is old;

Ah! faith is warm, but heaven with age is cold.

    (Ho ho, ho ho,

    The cloistered doubt

    Of olden times

    Is blurted out!)

The Ancient of Days forever is young,

  Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;

I know a wind in purpose strong—

  It spins against the way it drives.

What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?

So deep must the stones be hurled

Whereon the throes of ages rear

The final empire and the happier world.

    (The poor old Past,

    The Future's slave,

    She drudged through pain and crime

    To bring about the blissful Prime,

    Then—perished. There's a grave!)

  Power unanointed may come—

Dominion (unsought by the free)

  And the Iron Dome,

Stronger for stress and strain,

Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;

But the Founders' dream shall flee.

Agee after age shall be

As age after age has been,

(From man's changeless heart their way they win);

And death be busy with all who strive—

Death, with silent negative.

    Yea, and Nay—

    Each hath his say;

    But God He keeps the middle way.

    None was by

    When He spread the sky;

    Wisdom is vain, and prophesy.

Apathy and Enthusiasm.

(1860-1.)

I.

O the clammy cold November,

  And the winter white and dead,

And the terror dumb with stupor,

  And the sky a sheet of lead;

And events that came resounding

  With the cry that All was lost,

Like the thunder-cracks of massy ice

  In intensity of frost—

Bursting one upon another

  Through the horror of the calm.

  The paralysis of arm

In the anguish of the heart;

And the hollowness and dearth.

  The appealings of the mother

  To brother and to brother

Not in hatred so to part—

And the fissure in the hearth

  Growing momently more wide.

Then the glances 'tween the Fates,

  And the doubt on every side,

And the patience under gloom

In the stoniness that waits

The finality of doom.

II.

So the winter died despairing,

  And the weary weeks of Lent;

And the ice-bound rivers melted,

  And the tomb of Faith was rent.

O, the rising of the People

  Came with springing of the grass,

They rebounded from dejection

  And Easter came to pass.

And the young were all elation

  Hearing Sumter's cannon roar,

And they thought how tame the Nation

  In the age that went before.

And Michael seemed gigantical,

  The Arch-fiend but a dwarf;

And at the towers of Erebus

  Our striplings flung the scoff.

But the elders with foreboding

  Mourned the days forever o'er,

And re called the forest proverb,

  The Iroquois' old saw:

Grief to every graybeard

  When young Indians lead the war.

The March into Virginia,

Ending in the First Manassas.

(July, 1861.)

Did all the lets and bars appear

  To every just or larger end,

Whence should come the trust and cheer?

  Youth must its ignorant impulse lend—

Age finds place in the rear.

  All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,

The champions and enthusiasts of the state:

  Turbid ardors and vain joys

    Not barrenly abate—

  Stimulants to the power mature,

    Preparatives